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POLICE are hopeful they are on the verge of solving the 1990 disappearance and presumed murder of Coober Pedy teenager Karen Williams.
They have begun excavating an old mine on the outskirts of the town and expect to retrieve the 16-year-old's remains.

It stems from a major development in the 23-year-old cold case last August , when Major Crime detectives received new information and identified a suspect after an extensive review

They seem to have definite new info about the vehicle. This is fascinating. Why are police apparently so certain there will still be forensic evidence in a BURNT OUT vehicle from 1990, that they haven't even located yet?

I wish there was more background to this case. This young girl's been missing 23 years now - it would be nice to bring her home.

A MAN has been arrested for the murder of a 16-year-old girl last seen more than two decades ago in the South Australian outback.
Police said the 42-year-old man was arrested on Thursday in Mount Gambier, was refused bail and will appear in court on Friday.

Detectives now believe the man drove Karen to an isolated area where she was murdered.

They believe while one man was responsible for murdering Karen, others may have helped him dispose of her body down a mine shaft located near the intersection of Maliotis Bvd and Flat Hill Rd, about 100 metres from the Stuart Hwy. Several shafts at the site have so far been searched but no trace of Karen's body has been found.

An extensive search was conducted in July, with police excavating a number of old mine shafts in the town.

They will return on Tuesday with plans to concentrate on a similar area.
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Nice to see also after 23 years there was Justice for Karen.
Looks like Police are absolutely determined to bring Karen Williams home as well.
Good on them!
And best of luck with the search.
I hope she is found.

Police have today returned to remote Coober Pedy in the South Australian outback in a new effort to find the body of a 16-year-old teenager who went missing in 24 years ago...

Detective Superintendent Des Bray said two witnesses had come forward with new information since a previous outback search was made. The witnesses have accurately pinpointed two locations about 1km from the town centre that are likely to be where the teenager was dumped after being abducted, bashed, and thrown down a mineshaft.

SA police have also obtained new aerial photography of the remote outback area that was taken at the time the teenager disappeared. “The photographs we were previously unaware of and that has been of considerable assistance in comparing the site between when Karen Williams was abducted, compared with the landscape today.”

The search for the remains of a South Australian teenager who went missing 24 years ago has been called off...

Police, State Emergency Service personnel, council staff and volunteers began searching a mine shaft on Tuesday but found nothing of significance. More shafts have been searched since without success...

A $200,000 reward remains on offer to anyone who can lead police to the discovery of her remains.

The man accused of the Karen Williams cold case murder asked a fellow inmate if DNA could be sourced from a body after 20 years and then confessed to the crime, a court has heard.

After an 11-month adjournment, prompted by legal argument, the trial of Nikola Novakovich resumed in the Supreme Court on Monday...

On Monday, Novakovic’s former fellow inmate said he had no knowledge of the case prior to the October 2012 conversation... “A fortnight later, he came up to me and said ‘you know how I said I buried her next to the hotel, they’ve since built an outdoor toilet block over her’.”

It is "inconceivable" Coober Pedy teenager Karen Williams is still alive and the prosecution does not need her body to prove its case against the alleged murderer, a Supreme Court judge has been told...

In closing addresses to Justice Tim Stanley, who is hearing the trial without a jury, prosecutor Jim Pearce QC said it was not plausible that the teenager simply went "walkabout"... "It means that for the last 26 years now Karen Williams has managed to avoid detection by any government agency or authority," he said...

Novakovich's lawyer, Marie Shaw QC, told the court inconsistencies in witness accounts of alleged confessions from the accused cast doubt on the case... "The circumstances that are said to, or alleged to surround each of the ways in which death is caused, are so disparate and irreconcilable."

A man who stood trial for murdering Coober Pedy teenager Karen Williams in 1990 has walked free from the South Australian Supreme Court after being acquitted.
Nikola Novakovich, 45, was accused of killing the teenager who went missing in the town 26 years ago.
Justice Tim Stanley delivered his verdict this morning, finding Mr Novakovich not guilty of murder and not guilty of thelesser charge of manslaughter.